Two poems by MIRIAM BIRD GREENBERG

Shortness of Breath

The kind of animalwho comes in from the woodsto a town with only twotelephones and pressesthe mass of his enormous bodyagainst the glass faceof the telephone exchange,where someone working late, or expectinga call, might see iton hind legsfill the windowlike a shortness of breath,brief interruption of furfrom scars runningacross its chest--then retreat into the enormousnight. It is this kindof animal I once spoketo, unarmed, approachinga rock ledge where the stoneparted and was filledby air—then the airparted, and what remainedthere was only the fearfulunknown,which we both smelledon the wind.

117 The Paris-American

The Old Order

Cantanker runs in both forks of my family tree

and what we fight over is memory’s falsecavern, a cenote filled up with rain. Now why

would you let that dog in the house with you,

my grandmother says, of a shadow slipping in as I shut the door. Don’t lie to me. In the desert

once, she had come upon death

sitting on a log to nurse her child. My grandmawas hungry, no food all day and her water bottles

were empty. Death had seen it in her--

drew from a shivering canvas baga snared rabbit, slit open its belly with a penknife.

Each inside a blood-veined veil lay three fetal rabbits, slick

fur and eyes shut, smaller than walnuts,and she offered them to my grandmother. What should

a woman do once she’s laid a dish of meat in the hall,sat up half the night and forgotten why? She wears

her vanity like a fur collar; denial, a horse’s flank

shivering suddenly at a fly bite. Whistling St. Louis Womanis sometimes the only thing she can do

to keep intruders at bay. She did not shit in my bed.

With a paring knife in the dark kitchen she begins flayinga banana. She spits it onto her plate, offers it

a moment later to anyone, her assembled young.

118 The Paris-American

Miriam Bird Greenberg's work has appeared in Poetry, Ninth Letter, and the Colorado Review. She's the author of two chapbooks, All night in the new country (Sixteen Rivers) and Pact-Blood, Fever Grass (Ricochet Editions), and has held fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the NEA, and the Poetry Foundation. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches ESL.